Temptress
by setepenre-set
Summary: Metro City's resident supervillain, The Temptress, faces off with the city's superhero...Megamind. (partial role-reversal AU; Roxanne is a supervillain)


"Come _on_ , buddy; _hurry up_ ," Metro Man's voice comes through Megamind's earpiece.

"Shut _up_ , Wayne; I am trying to _concentrate!_ " Megamind hisses back, up to his elbows in the circuitry of Temptress's bomb, attempting to figure out how to stop it from exploding without, hey, making it explode.

"This is taking too long; hurry up; you gotta go after her; she's gonna get away again—"

"Yes, well, excuse me if I'm less worried about that than the possibility of _exploding and dying a fiery death—_ "

(red wire, red wire, another red wire; why are all of the goddamn wires red; why does Metro City's supervillain have to be so damn smart; now he has to trace each wire back to its origin to figure out which one is which—)

"What are you, afraid she's going to kiss you again?" Wayne asks. "Don't know what you're so freaked about; it's not like her powers even work on you—"

"If you don't shut up, I am going to—"

"—she kisses everybody; it's kind of her thing—"

"—going to end up dying a painful and explosively exciting death that I in no way deserve—"

"—just because you have a mindcrush on her—"

"I do not have a mindcrush!" Megamind says. "That isn't even a thing that people—and! and aren't you supposed to be rescuing the hostages right now?"

Wayne laughs, the bastard.

"As opposed," Megamind continues, "to bothering me while I am engaged in a very delicate operation with an intensely complicated and dangerous piece of technology that could lead to—"

"—mindcrush," Wayne says smugly, and then cuts the feed before Megamind can respond; Megamind regrets every day the necessity of working with him—

Ha! There's the correct wire! Except—ah, yes, there's the secondary booby trap that will be triggered by cutting it, god, but she's good—

Er. Bad. Yes. Very very bad, a very bad supervillain who he in _no way has a mindcrush on_ , because he is a superhero, damn it, and he takes his responsibilities to this city seriously—

Megamind cuts the wire and promptly triggers a _tertiary_ booby trap. He has just enough time to think _oh no_ before there is an explosion of purple glitter from the ceiling above his head. It rains down on him, coating his skin, his clothes, and his boots.

A small white piece of paper flutters down after the glitter; Megamind catches it.

Sure enough, there's a note written on it in her handwriting:

 ** _Stay pretty, sweetheart._**

There's a scarlet lipstick print on the paper in place of a signature, the imprint of a kiss. He can smell her perfume on the page.

Megamind feels himself flushing hot beneath the glitter.

Oh, god, who is he kidding; this is _so much worse_ than a mindcrush.

* * *

There's a reason she's called the Temptress; and there's a reason Metro Man couldn't be the one to chase after her while Megamind was busy trying to defuse the bomb.

Her pheromone powers wreak havoc; people meant to be arresting her end up falling at her feet instead in adoration and desire. They even work on Wayne, when she really makes an effort, and when she uses them on Minion, they give him a splitting headache and jumpstart his mating season instincts, which is…awkward.

But they don't work on Megamind, for some reason. When she defeats him (and she does, sometimes) it's not because of her powers; it's because she is incredibly intelligent.

She is—her mind is just—yeah, okay, Megamind has a crush on it, all right, but also—

—also, she's—

Amazing. In. In general. And god, does he ever wish he could blame his weird, pathetic feelings for her on her powers.

* * *

Later, after the Temptress has, in fact, gotten away again, after Megamind has been laughed at by Wayne and scolded by Minion for getting glitter all over the uniform Minion designed for him (again), after he's taken several showers in an attempt to get rid of the glitter—

(personally, he has a sneaking fondness for the shiny stuff, but Minion hates the way it gets everywhere)

—he takes out the note she wrote to him and looks it over again.

 ** _Stay pretty, sweetheart._**

And then the lipstick mark in the shape of her mouth, making him remember—

They're fighting, in one of the alleyways near the library; he almost manages to dehydrate her, but she dodges in time and knocks the de-gun out of his hand with a kick, and then she shoves him back against the rough brick wall of the alley, her own ray gun pressed beneath his chin and—

There's a setting on her ray gun that's similar to the debilitate setting on his; she's hit him with it before and he's expecting her to hit him with it again now (it's probably going to hurt a bit more at point-blank range, but fair is fair and—)

He's certainly not expecting her to kiss him, but she does, her body pressed against his, and her _mouth_ —

Megamind, standing in the workroom of his secret hideout, comes back to himself with a jerk, flushing hot as he realizes that he's unconsciously pressed two fingers against his lips, remembering—

Kissing _is_ kind of the Temptress's thing, but she's never done it to _him_ before, in all the time that they've fought, all of the…

It doesn't matter. It didn't mean anything to her, for god's sake, Megamind, get a grip.

(the easy way she'd parted his lips with her tongue and licked into his mouth, the way he'd made an embarrassingly needy sound and clutched at her instead of pushing her away like he should have, the way she'd tasted—)

(she'd pulled away out of the kiss and it had taken a moment for Megamind to remember himself enough to open his eyes, and he'd been gasping for breath, and she'd been looking at him with a strange expression, and she'd said—)

 _(—aren't you pretty when you're breathless—)_

Megamind slams the note down on the drafting table beside him.

 _(stay pretty, sweetheart)_

Pretty.

Yeah, right.

As though someone like her could ever look at _him_ and honestly think _pretty_.

The mockery stings more than the fact that she could have had him, today—if the tertiary trap had been a real bomb instead of glitter, he'd be dead now.

( _she could have had you in that alleyway, too_ , his mind whispers slyly, _could have had you in more than one way, could have had you any way she wanted_ )

He picks up a wrench and goes to work on the battle suit that got damaged a month ago, when she robbed the art museum.

(she _hadn't_ wanted him, _didn't_ want him. that was the _point_.)

It's a good thing Wayne and Minion have a date tonight, Megamind reflects with grim satisfaction as he starts on the suit. He is in no mood for company right now; he even sent the brainbots out to practice defensive maneuvers without him, because he didn't know if he could even deal with the prospect of interacting with them.

Better this way; he can take out his frustration on non-sentient machinery and try to get his feelings under—

 _There's someone watching him._

The sudden sensation of being observed by unseen eyes prickles up his spine, raising goosebumps on his skin, making his nerves sing.

He strains his ears, but he can't hear anything, can't—

(should he turn now; should he wait until whoever it is comes closer, to catch them off guard, should he—)

There's a sound, finally, a whisper of fabric; it's in front of him, and Megamind looks up sharply, still crouched on the ground, and sees—

 _Her._

She steps out from the darkness, the shadows clinging to her like they love her too much to let her go, her cape sliding over the concrete floor languidly, like the caress of a lover.

"Temptress," he breathes, and she smiles at him, mouth crimson and eyes wicked as she strides towards him, unhurried, confident.

He drops the wrench (like the utter, utter idiot that he is) and scrambles to his feet, stumbling backwards until his back hits the wall.

Her smile widens and she catches both of his wrists in her hands, pulling them above his head, pinning them there.

She steps forward, pressing against him, her face inches from his, and he cannot bring himself to meet her gaze.

"Megamind," she murmurs, "we meet again."

He turns his head away, eyes closed, hating himself for the way his pulse is fluttering, hating how weak he is, how he's unable to make himself push her away.

She changes her grip on his wrists, so that she's holding both of them in one of her hands, now. She trails the gloved fingertips of her other hand down the side of his throat and he shudders.

"That's new," she says, "you've never been afraid of me, before."

Megamind swallows hard.

"What are you scared of, sweetheart?" she asks teasingly, her lips brushing against his ear. "Are you afraid I'm going to kiss you again?"

She nuzzles just beneath his ear and it takes all of Megamind's self-control not to moan.

"Are you afraid you'll fall in love with me if I do?" she whispers.

"—too late," Megamind says, before he can stop himself, and then—

She kisses him again, and it's even better than the last time, which he hadn't previously thought possible, her hand beneath his chin, instead of a gun, the gloved fingers of her other hand lacing with his and—

He feels the moment that her pheromone powers spike; they're always there, a low level hum in the back of his mind, but this is sudden and strong enough that it has to be deliberate, and that—the confirmation that this isn't real, that she's not kissing him because she wants to, but because she knows she can use this against him—

That hits him in a sickening wave of misery.

He pushes her away.

"Don't," he hisses as she stumbles back from him.

A look of confusion crosses her face; she tips her head and he feels her powers spike again, even higher this time, crackling in the air between them.

"Stop it," he says, angry now, which is good, because if he wasn't angry, he's pretty sure he'd be crying, "that doesn't work on me."

She narrows her eyes, lunges for him suddenly, hand beneath his chin again, tilting it up so she can look into his eyes.

"But you _are_ attracted to me," she says, almost accusingly. "I can tell!"

"Yeah, I am," Megamind snaps, jerking out of her grip and stepping away, arms crossed defensively in front of his chest.

"You let me kiss you! _Twice!_ "

"Yeah," Megamind says flatly, "I did."

"You said that you _loved_ _me_!"

Megamind flinches, shoulders curving inwards, looking at the floor.

"Can we please not talk about that?" he asks, hating how small his voice sounds.

"…was that…but that had to be the pheromones…"

He looks up at her sharply; she actually looks uncertain. He's never seen her look like that, before, and her voice—sounded almost as small as his.

"Do you—do you mean you actually just— _like_ me?" she says, sounding bewildered. "As a _person?_ "

"Oh, come on; how could I not?!" Megamind bursts out, gesturing wildly at her. "You're—brilliant and you're funny and you're—so much—kinder than you pretend to be and you—you treat the brainbots like they're alive and—you're—"

He gestures again, at a loss for words.

She stares at him, that odd, unreadable expression from the alleyway on her face again.

"…you didn't even say _beautiful_ ," she says, sounding lost.

"—yes, beautiful, that too, _obviously_ ," he says, dragging his hands over his face, wanting to sink through the floor.

(god, why is this happening to him; why is he so stupid)

"No, I mean— _beautiful_ —that's what everybody always says, when I ask them," she says, moving towards him, her eyes wide, "they always—beautiful is the only thing people ever say, the only reason they ever—"

She reaches for him again and he watches her warily but lets her do it, lets her touch his face gently, lets her hold it in her hands.

"The pheromones really still don't work on you?"

"No," he says quietly. "No, they don't."

Her expression changes, then, turns—relieved? Why is she—?

"I thought…" she trails off, not finishing the sentence.

Her pheromone powers spike, higher than he's ever felt them before, her eyes fixed on his face. After a moment, they drop again.

"Nothing?" she says.

He shakes his head, gently enough that her hands stay on his face.

She smiles, then, a wider, brighter, and more—honest—smile than he's ever seen her wear, and she leans forward, closing the few inches between them.

She cradles his face in her hands and she kisses him like she's afraid he's going to break, or disappear, and when he reaches for her, wraps his arm gently around her waist and touches her jaw with the shaking fingertips of his other hand, she makes a quiet, amazed noise and breaks the kiss.

"—let me keep you," she says. She presses a line of fluttering kisses up his jaw. "Let me keep you; stay with me. Let me love you, let me make you my king; we can rule this city, you know we can; together we'd be unstoppable—"

"I know—" Megamind says, turning his head to press a kiss to her hair, "I know we would; that's why—that's why I can't—"

"Please," she begs. "Please, Megamind, please—"

"Roxanne—Roxanne, I—I can't—"

"Why?" she snarls, pulling back to look at him in the face, her eyes blazing, "why not? Why do you care about these people so much? Don't you know what they're _like?_ "

"Yes," he says, "I—I do know what they're like."

He strokes his fingers through her hair, and she doesn't stop glaring at him, but she does lean into his touch.

"I care because—because I have to believe that they can be better. If I give them a chance."

She makes an angry, wounded noise and he kisses her soothingly,

"Why are you so good?" she says, still frowning, when he breaks the kiss.

He gives a quiet, breathless laugh.

"I mean, I try really hard to be," he says honestly.

She growls, narrowing her eyes, and he bumps their noses together, surprising her into blinking at him, wide-eyed.

"You could, um—you could try?" he says uncertainly, playing with the ends of her hair. "Being—good. I mean. You could—I could help you. If—if you wanted?"

She stares at him.

"…wouldn't your sidekick have something to say about that?" she says.

"Minion?" Megamind says. "No. Minion likes you; I thought you—"

"—not Minion; Metro Man," she says, lips twisting.

Megamind blinks at her, and then laughs.

"Flatterer," he says, and kisses her quickly, inordinately pleased at her calling _Metro Man_ his sidekick. "No, Wayne wouldn't have a problem with it; he'd actually— _heh_ , he'd probably actually be _wildly excited_ ; he's been wanting to retire for years, and you stopping supervillainy would probably give him the perfect excuse, especially if—"

He cuts himself off as a possibility occurs to him, a wondrous, glorious possibility, but she'll probably never—

"Especially if what?" Roxanne asks.

"Um, I mean—I actually got into this—the—uh—the superhero thing, I mean—for community service, and so I'm fairly certain I could swing something like that for you if you were interested, and then Wayne really would be able to retire, because he'd have a replacement and—and we could. You said—you said that—together, we'd be unstoppable, and we could—we could. We could…be partners. If you wanted."

Her lips part; Megamind looks at her nervously, watching her expression as she stares at him.

"Partners," she says, "I—yes, partners, I'd—I'd like that."

Megamind's heart leaps in his chest, but then her expression goes abruptly dark and shuttered and she steps back from him, arms crossed over her chest, like she's cold.

"…it's a nice dream, sweetheart," she says, voice low and eyes shadowed. "But it—it'd never work. They'd never let me; you have to realize that—"

"I—"

He reaches for her, but she shies away.

"Don't," she says, "don't act like—you say you know what they're like, but you have no idea—"

"Roxanne—"

"Do you know what they did to me, when my powers first showed up?" she asks fiercely, "They locked me in a lab because they said I was 'too dangerous' to be around normal people. They put a shock collar on me, to teach me to control myself. Like I was a dog. I was _fourteen_. So don't you tell me that you know what they're like, because—"

"They did that to me, too," Megamind says, voice quiet, and she stops, stares at him, her eyes wide and shining with tears.

"…they…"

"Not the shock collar," he continues, "but there was this—this helmet that they designed for me, after I got arrested as a teenager. It was meant to interfere with cognitive function, to keep me in line. I was lucky, the Warden—I only—I only actually wore it a couple of times; after that, it was always mysteriously broken when they went to put it on me, and like I said, after that, I got—let out on parole for community service and they stopped— I'm—I'm so sorry, Roxanne. I'm so sorry that you didn't have—someone to help you, like I did. I'm so sorry that—that you were alone. But you don't—you don't have to be alone anymore. Not if—not if you don't want to be."

Roxanne looks at him, her expression strangely blank. She tilts her head.

"They did that to you," she says, voice expressionless, "and you became a superhero for them?"

"I—I mean—" Megamind twists his fingers around each other awkwardly, "that was—like I said, that was community service, originally, and also sort of—um. Damage control. When we were teenagers, Wayne wasn't exactly the most—he was already a hero, but he didn't—he needed someone to make sure he remembered to think…"

"And now you want _me_ to play nice," Roxanne says, lip curling in a sneer, "with these vicious, mindless idiots who decided to torture both of us for being different?"

Roxanne draws herself up, hands curling into fists at her sides, chin going up, lips curving into a dangerous smile.

(no—not _Roxanne_ ; this is the _Temptress_ again, every inch a supervillain, ever inch the Evil Queen, ready to crush the city beneath the heels of her high leather boots, ready to bring you to your knees and make you thank her for the privilege of kissing her feet)

(( _all shall love her and despair_ , Megamind's mind whispers to him, and oh, he does love her, he does, but he will not despair; he refuses—))

"They called me evil," she says, "Well, that's what they got. That's what they _deserve_."

"But that's not what _you_ deserve, Roxanne," Megamind says.

Roxanne freezes.

Her eyes are wide and shocked as she stares at him for a long moment, neither of them moving, and then Megamind crosses to her, hands fluttering as he touches her arms, her face.

"Please," he whispers, "you deserve to be happy, Roxanne. Please let me—let me try to help you to be happy."

"I—can't—I can't," she says miserably, tears in her eyes spilling over, "I can't, my powers—I can control them now, but they're always there; I can't turn them off, and they'll never let me—they'll never let me, not like this—"

"I can fix that," Megamind blurts out. "I—I mean! Not—not fix like—it's not that you're broken, I don't mean fix like—I just—" He takes a sharp breath through his nose. "I can see that your constant low-level pheromone emission might pose a problem in certain circumstances," he says, "and I think I've come up with a way around it."

"—you—?"

"Ah! Yes! I mean, it was actually sort of on accident," he says, "I was trying to figure out why your powers don't work on me; I assumed it had something to do with my species processing pheromones differently, or possibly having different pheromones key off attraction, so that it was almost like…mmm…like I was somehow 'blind' to the signals that you were giving off, yes?"

"…yes?" Roxanne says.

"No!" Megamind says, gesturing excitedly with both hands, "Turns out I was completely wrong; it's not that my body doesn't sense the pheromones you give off, it's that my body actually produces a chemical that functions to block them! It's really quite fascinating—I did some experiments and I've put something together that I think should enable you to completely control the pheromone emission—"

"—and—taking this would…get rid of the pheromone powers entirely?" Roxanne asks slowly.

Megamind stops, nose wrinkling.

"I mean—in high enough doses, it could probably nullify them completely, so that you couldn't access them at all, but obviously that wouldn't be the goal. We'd have to do some experiments, of course, and I'd want you to look over my research to see if you think I've missed anything, but I'm confident that if we worked together, we could find a dosage level that would allow you to inhibit them just enough. So that you wouldn't be giving off the constant low-level emission, but you'd still be able to use them if you wanted to and I'm—not really sure why you're looking at me like that?"

"—nullifying them completely—wouldn't have to be the goal?" she asks, voice wavering.

"Wh—no, of course not, Roxanne," Megamind says, "of course not—I—you don't have to try the pheromone inhibitor at all if you don't want to; we can come up with something else if you like. I just—it's—it's your choice; it's always your choice. I just want you to know that you do have that as a choice. That's all."

"That's all," Roxanne says, and she's crying again, oh god, is he doing this completely wrong? "That's all? Megamind, that's—you're—"

She stops and gestures a little wildly, evidently unable to come up with words, and he shrinks backwards, sure that he really has done this completely wrong, but then she throws herself into his arms, sudden and graceless, and kisses him again.

She's crying, still, but she's also sort of laughing breathlessly, and her arms are wound tight around him, like she never wants to let him go, and, okay, yes, this is good, it's so, so good—

The sound of the door opening, and of voices and laughter, makes them both jump.

"—you laugh but you know I'm right!" Minion says, over the sound of Wayne snickering. "You're just—uh…"

There's a long, awkward moment of silence as the two of them stare at Megamind and Roxanne.

Wayne coughs.

"Um," says Megamind, not at all intelligently.

"Sooooo…" Wayne says, "is this a battle thing or a date thing? 'Cause I can't tell if I should strike a heroic pose or not?"

Minion, at Wayne's side, is goggling at the Megamind and Roxanne, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly like all of the water in his headpiece has suddenly disappeared.

"Um," says Megamind again, even less intelligently than before.

Roxanne laughs, a bright ripple of sound that, even in the midst of his intense embarrassment, makes him shiver.

"Oh, there won't be any need for that," she says, smirking at Wayne and Minion. "Haven't you heard? I've decided to renounce my wicked ways and reform for the love of a good man."

Megamind's mouth falls open in shock, and he can feel himself flush suddenly. Is she—

"—really?" he manages to say.

She looks at him again, and he's amazed to see that there's a slight flush on her cheeks, too.

"Yeah," she says softly, "yeah, that's—really."

"…okay! That's—that's great, guys," Wayne says after a long moment, "uh. Yeah. Minion and I are just gonna—go hang out at my place, now, right after I say **_I told you so_** —yeah, okay, Minion; I'm coming; I'm coming—"

Megamind, too busy kissing Roxanne to actually answer, makes a rude gesture at him.

(Roxanne laughs into the kiss.)


End file.
